BitX has raised a US$4 million in its Series A funding round led by the South African media firm Naspers through its payments subsidiary PayU.

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Singapore-headquartered Bitcoin exchange BitX has raised a US$4 million in its Series A funding round led by the South African media firm Naspers through its payments subsidiary PayU.

BitX provides a bitcoin wallet, an exchange, merchant integration and APIs to businesses and consumers across the world, allowing faster and cheaper money transfers, buying online, and trading and storing of bitcoin.

It has built up a sizeable presence in Southeast Asia and Africa, with offices in Jakarta and Cape Town, and has had a busy month, having launched operations in Nigeria two weeks ago. The company says it has the largest emerging market footprint of any cryptocurrency company, available to over half a billion consumers.

Naspers, a multinational internet and media group with services in more than 130 countries, leads this funding round, which also includes an existing investor, Barry Silbert’s Digital Currency Group.

BitX co-founder and CEO Marcus Swanepoel said:

“We’ve been seeing very strong growth across the markets we operate in, and this investment will allow us to both accelerate this growth and extend our footprint to more markets.”

Naspers provides BitX with a truly global partner with strong capabilities in high growth markets, and will assist the company in building out its global platform.

James Caviness, chief product officer at PayU, will join the BitX board of directors, and says he sees a bright future for cryptocurrency across a number of industry verticals.

“This, combined with our access to world-class engineering and business talent across our operational centers, our deep local knowledge and relationships in the markets we operate in, and our mobile-first approach, gives us a strong competitive advantage as we continue to build out our global platform,” he concluded.